Showing posts with label Half-Broke Horses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Half-Broke Horses. Show all posts

Monday, November 9, 2009

JEANNETTE WALLS (Everybody has a story!)

I loved The Glass Castle! So naturally when I heard Author, Jeannette Walls was coming to my hometown I ignored everything else and showed up at Lenoir Rhyne University.

Mike Collins, host of "Charlotte Talks", a local NPR program, interviewed her for a radio broadcast which you can listen to here.

Or you can get a slightly blurry glimpse here.


Jeannette is funny and wise and has chosen a positive attitude toward her horrendous childhood.

We know that having her book on the NYT best seller list for 100 weeks made Jeannette a rich woman. But she doesn't take material things for granted. To her, flush toilets, the ability to buy groceries, and the chance to take piano lessons is a miracle. I love that about Jeannette, that she can still revel in the small luxuries of life.

And that she can see the upside of down things.

She said:

  • On the upside, I'm a fighter and a scrapper. On the downside, I'm a fighter and a scrapper!
  • We all have demons. We have to put a harness on our demons, not cast them out!
  • I have a great life. Why regret how I got here?
  • There are the facts. And then there's the truth.

Jeannette has a new book out, Half-Broke Horses which tells the story of her maternal grandmother. Although it's fictionalized, it too, feels much like a memoir in the telling. Having read her grandmother's story, I can see a bit of what shaped her mother and also what has made Jeannette the resilient person she is.

Friday, October 23, 2009

THE SALT BLOCK: So much to do. So little time!

If you drive through my hometown you may drive by the SALT BLOCK. And exactly what does that mean?

Simply this: Science, Arts, & Literature Together on one city block.

It's a city block with:

The only problem with all this goodness in one place is sometimes a body just can't do it all! As on November 5 when I want to be in the art museum for a program on "Trompe L'Oeil - The Art of Illusion" and also at an event co-sponsored by my alma mater and The Hickory Public Library - an evening with Jeannette Walls!

Jeannette wrote The Glass Castle, a memoir which I loved and also Half Broke Horses which I've reserved at the Catawba County Library.

Since I can't do both the art and the literature event, I'll have to make a difficult choice. But then again, maybe it wasn't that hard. From the moment I knew Jeannette was coming, I knew I'd be going to hear her!

You can meet Jeannette and her mom here!